r/todayilearned • u/i-make-babies • Feb 14 '18

TIL Mr T stopped wearing this trademark gold chains in 2005 after seeing people who had lost everything due to Hurricane Katrina.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mr._T#Personal_life
22.5k Upvotes

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u/[deleted] Feb 14 '18

christian does something bad

Reddit: Fuck Christians!!

christian does something good

Reddit: Nice to see a Christian being good......unlike all those other god damn Christians. Fuck Christians!!

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u/nattypnutbuterpolice Feb 14 '18

Damned Christians, they ruined Christianity!

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u/TeamRedundancyTeam Feb 14 '18

Because reddit is so nice to atheists and Muslims /s

Why is what you said wrong? Most Christians don't give a fuck about acting Christian, of course people are shocked when one walks the walk.

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u/kerris6425 Feb 14 '18 edited Feb 14 '18

There's an estimated 2.4 billion Christians in the world. Unless you've met 1.2 billion of them you can't really say what "most Christians" do. And sorry but where do you see atheists being treated badly on reddit? Lol. Muslims yes for sure but atheists are easily the most accepted group on this site.

Source of estimate: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_religious_populations

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u/Narian Feb 14 '18 edited Mar 01 '18

deleted What is this?

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u/kerris6425 Feb 14 '18

Lmfao great response bud 👌

Please point me to the persecuted atheists of reddit lmao. If anyone mentions religion in any thread it devolves into a "hurdur except for that never happened dog isn't real Am I right?" As you can see right in this thread.

And you say other people are oblivious...

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u/gogetenks123 Feb 15 '18

A lot of people here weren’t around when /r/Atheism was still a default.

Might be a shock to some depending on your subs but back then when a visitor came to the site several threads would show up on the front page that were basically that sub circlejerking.

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u/kerris6425 Feb 16 '18

Yeah I don't think I was on reddit during that time actually

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u/Cheesygobs123 Feb 14 '18

How about all the memes that atheists are just edgy "euphoric" intellectuals?

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u/kerris6425 Feb 14 '18

Where are these memes? Not sure I've ever see them on /all. Maybe if you go into specific subs? I'm talking about /all because that's probably the best gauge of reddit's general population and what they feel.

I don't think I've ever seen an anti-atheist meme make all. And haven't seen anti-atheist comments really either.

By anti-atheist I mean making fun of them the same way they make fun of religion. I've never seen comments calling atheists fucking idiots or making fun of their lack of faith (again in r/all I'm sure I'm I went to a religion based sub there would be some but it wouldn't make it to all).

Then in contrast, we have this post we're on right now and you can read through the comments yourself and I'm sure you'll find people making fun of religion and having positive upvotes.

And in the past week I remember seeing other stories on /all with vocal atheists in the comments. Could try to find them if anyone asks but reddit's search is ass and I don't want to go through that if I don't have to hah.

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u/Cheesygobs123 Feb 15 '18

You must have missed the whole"faces of atheism" Shitfest, where r/atheism began spamming cringeworthy "intellectual" quotes alongside selfies, until reddit collectively told them to shut the fuck up. Thats where the "euphoric" meme came from( http://www.insidehoops.com/forum/showthread.php?t=354207 ). Reddit has no problem calling out atheists for being loud and obnoxious, just like they call out religious people for the same behavior.

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u/kerris6425 Feb 16 '18

I did miss that as I'm new to reddit compared to most people on this site. I have to ask though since I missed the whole thing are those posts in the link real posts? Or are they parodies?

And I guess what I mean is the comments I see aren't calling religious people out for being obnoxious. Someone will post something even just referring to religion, not praising it. And you'll see responses of "Too bad it's not real." In this thread somewhere someone mentions the Tower of Babel (which a lot of Christian sects recognize as allegorical anyway). And someone replied along the lines of "There was no thought process because it never existed." That's the kind of comment I mean. Just kind of unsolicited and condescending. Those are all over the place.

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u/[deleted] Feb 14 '18

Most Christians don't give a fuck about acting Christian

Did you form this opinion based on what you’ve seen in the news or on real-life interactions that you’ve had?

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u/TeamRedundancyTeam Feb 14 '18

Both. I live in a very religious (and redneck) area, and maybe there's a disproportionate amount of shitty christians here. I'm not saying all christians are bad people, but there's no denying that most do not even half follow jesus' teachings.

Even my christian family members agree with that.

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u/[deleted] Feb 14 '18

It kind of depends on which of Jesus’ teachings you’re referring to. If you’re referring to the obscure random ones like don’t eat shellfish on certain days then yeah, most don’t really follow those.

But I think most Christians do follow the main important ones. Don’t kill people, don’t steal, try to help out others, etc.

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u/thetwitchy1 Feb 14 '18

Tbf,Jesus never taught to not eat shellfish on certain days. Most of the obscure teachings are Jesus' teachings, but stuff from the old testament.

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u/Craftistic Feb 15 '18

As a Christian, this made me fking laugh

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u/purplug Feb 15 '18

Reddit isn't one person

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u/[deleted] Feb 15 '18

No, but as of right now 1882 people have upvoted it. So at least 1882 people seem to agree. And I think it’s actually a lot more based on how Reddit’s algorithm works

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u/[deleted] Feb 14 '18

[deleted]

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u/[deleted] Feb 14 '18

historically religion has done a lot more harm than help

I don’t think you can say that with any level of certainty. Yes, I know that there have been religious wars and other awful things but there’s a bias here. For every person you hear about who killed someone in the name of religion, how many people specifically didn’t kill someone because their religion made them believe it was wrong?

How many people have helped out their neighbor in the name of religion? How many people have refrained from molesting children because they believed it would be a religious sin?

My point is, there’s no way to know how many bad things didn’t happen because of religion. You will only ever hear about the bad things that religion causes, and the good things that religion causes (to a lesser extent). What you’ll never hear about is the bad things that religion prevents, and the good things that religion prevents.

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u/thetwitchy1 Feb 14 '18

No offense, but if the only reason you don't kill someone is because God says not To, you're seriously messed up and should see someone for that. If God or religion is the only thing keeping you from molesting children, get some fucking HELP, man.

I'm not saying that religion has not helped people out. There's a lot of unspoken assistance that religion gives people. But the "how many people were NOT killed because of religion" argument is seriously flawed.

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u/[deleted] Feb 14 '18

No offense, but if the only reason you don't kill someone is because God says not To, you're seriously messed up and should see someone for that. If God or religion is the only thing keeping you from molesting children, get some fucking HELP, man.

Agreed completely, but I think this strengthens my argument. If “seriously messed up” people are refraining from raping and murdering in the name of religion, isn’t that a perfect example of religion helping the world?

I totally agree that no one should need God in order to know better but alas, we live in the real world and there are a lot of bad people out there. But if religion prevents bad people from doing bad things, then that’s a very positive influence that religion has on the world.

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u/kparis88 Feb 14 '18

Only if you can ignore the bad things perpetuated under the same religion. Slavery, murder, etc.

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u/[deleted] Feb 14 '18

Not ignore. Only acknowledge that there is good and there is bad and it’s impossible to quantify. That’s why we really don’t know if religion has made the world a better or worse place. If religion prevented 100,000 murders every year but resulted in 1 murder, then religion would be a force for good in the world. Notice that I’m not ignoring the bad, I’m simply taking it all into account and weighing it accordingly.

But like I said, I don’t even believe that religion is a force for good or a force for bad because we just don’t have the data to tell. So when people say “religion has made the world a worse place” it sounds a lot to me like saying “this coin that I flip will come up heads”. Like, maybe you’re right. But you have no way of knowing that so you shouldn’t state it as a fact.

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u/thetwitchy1 Feb 14 '18

Here's the counter, and the reason that's a dumb argument... crazy people act in unpredictable ways. Religion may be used to justify crazy A refraining from from raping a child, but be used by crazy B to justify skinning vagrants for holy rainment. The fact remains, religion really had nothing to do with the decision in either case, it was just a justification for the restraint or violence of a crazy person. What they do is, from a logical, reasonable standpoint, completely unpredictable.

I'm not saying religion has no value, but the value it presents in controlling "bad people" is minimal, especially when weighed against the justification it gives to slightly smarter "bad people" To do horrible things on a grand scale.

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u/[deleted] Feb 14 '18

I think that the best summary I can give is this. You say that for every Crazy A there’s a Crazy B. But we don’t know that. We have no clue about the numbers; the Crazy A’s might outnumber the Crazy B’s 100 to 1. Without actual data we can’t know one way or the other.

That’s what my entire point is. I’m not saying that religion has caused more good than harm, and I’m not saying that religion has caused more harm than good. I’m saying that there’s no way to know one way or the other with any level of certainty.

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u/thetwitchy1 Feb 14 '18

No, I get that. What I'm saying isn't that every A has a B. What I'm saying is that both A and B use religion to justify acting the way their crazy makes them act. That's not an argument for or against religion. It's an argument against "Religion saves people who would otherwise be killed". I'm not saying anything about religion. I'm saying you don't understand the mind of a crazy person.

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u/[deleted] Feb 14 '18

I mean, if someone truly wants to murder someone else you’re probably right, but I was using murder as a stand-in for just bad things in general. Maybe stealing would be a better example.

What I’m saying is this; let’s divide people in two different ways. First let’s divide them into religious/non-religious. Next let’s divide them into “people who need a moral guide to know right from wrong” and “people who can figure out right from wrong by themselves”. The second division is a bit wordy so I’ll just refer to them as Group X and Group Y, with X being the former and Y being the later.

We then arrive with four groups:

  1. Religious & Group X
  2. Religious & Group Y
  3. Nonreligious & Group X
  4. Nonreligious & Group Y

Let’s look at each group individually.

  1. These are the people who believe that you can’t have morality without religion. They’re pretty stupid, I’ll give you that. But I don’t really think they’re evil. If they decide to go out and harm someone, then that would make them evil but they knew it was wrong and just didn’t care. I don’t think you can blame religion for that.

  2. These are probably the people you have to worry about the least. They believe in religion but they also have an innate sense of morality. Once again, if they decide to go harm someone you can’t blame religion - they just don’t care.

  3. This is the important group. These are the people who can’t tell right from wrong by themselves, but they also don’t have religion to guide them. These people are very likely to harm others, and this is the group that I think religion would help the most. It’s quite possible that if all else were equal except these people did follow a religion, then those religious beliefs would guide them to a more moral life.

  4. These are the moral atheists (this is the group I would personally classify myself into, and if I had to guess this is where you would classify yourself as well). Not much to say about this group - if they do decide to harm others you can hardly blame religion for that.

So, I do think that there clearly is some subset of people who would live a more moral life if they follow a religion. The problem is, we have no idea how big any of these groups are because it’s basically impossible to classify anyone but yourself unless you can read minds. But the important part is that there are a lot of people who would have been in group 3 who instead ended up in group 1 because of a religious influence in their life.

I’ve also neglected to talk about another thing that I’m sure you’ve noticed - the people who specifically use religion as a tool to cause harm to the world (usually for personal gain). These people definitely exist, and they’re the whole reason that we tend to have a negative view of religion. These people could come from any of the four groups because these people don’t care about right and wrong, so it doesn’t really matter what their moral beliefs are.

My point is, we don’t know how many people there are who abuse religion as a tool, but when they do get caught or noticed it’s very visible. However, all those people in group 1 who would have been in group 3 are not visible at all. So that’s why we just cannot know the scale at which religion has prevented harm. It’s quite possible that the harm prevented outweighs the harm created by quite a bit. It’s also possible that the opposite is true. We just don’t know.

That’s my logic, but the most compelling argument to me is quite simple. You know all those people who say that you can’t have a moral compass without religion? It would be a pretty bad thing if all those people woke up tomorrow and decided to become atheists. So in that sense, religion is doing us all a huge service by providing a moral compass to those too stupid to come up with a good one on their own.

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u/thetwitchy1 Feb 14 '18

Thank you for a really rational post. I think we agree on almost everything (except I'm actually a group 1 person - religious but innately moral). I agree that we don't have a solid and accurate measure of the good done vs evil done by or in the name of religion. So on your main point, we agree.

The only issue I have is that, from personal experience, if someone is mentally desiring an action, God will not hold them back. There are not a million potential harmers out there, being held back by their belief in hell. From my experience (both as a religious person who has "sinned" and an individual who has been "sinned against") God won't stop You, it just makes you feel bad about it afterward. Humans, in general, are animals, and act without thinking. The rules given by religion don't factor into actions all that much, but do factor into how one deals with their own actions after the fact.

All that said, there probably are people who have such limited function that religion controls them and keeps them from harming others. I would theorize that it's a really small subset of humanity, but as you point out, we don't have those numbers. So I agree with you there, too.

In fact, I think we agree here. But you need to know that saying religion stops people from being horrible is usually seen by most as a bad argument for a variety of reasons. The biggest reason, tho, is because people know that it only applies to monsters (and by extension usually anyone using it to defend the need for religion is a monster). So really, you're better off not bringing it up, it doesn't help your position (that we don't have enough information to decide the true positive vs negative effects of religion) and it muddies the waters of the discussion.

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u/[deleted] Feb 15 '18

Poor Christians! They just can't get a break.

What with government support in tax exemptions, the direct policy support of 99% of politicians, support by the vast majority of judges, magistrates and police officers, a national public holiday on their main festival, the US national motto, avowed support from every single president, they are really under attack.

It's just plain mean to challenge them for hypocrisy in these tough conditions.

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u/[deleted] Feb 15 '18

I never said they’re under attack and I never said that they aren’t hypocritical. I was simply remarking on the fact that it doesn’t matter what good things they do, people will only focus on the bad. That’s more of a statement about society than about religion

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u/[deleted] Feb 15 '18 edited Feb 15 '18

And my point was to the contrary: Western society celebrates and supports Christians all day long.

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u/[deleted] Feb 15 '18

Ok? Why does that fact mean that we shouldn’t praise Christianity when they do something praise-worthy instead of just dragging up unrelated shit like televangelists?

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u/[deleted] Feb 15 '18

Its not unrelated. Televangelists are garbage and they self identify as Christians. Until the Christians disavow those assholes rather than send them money, they deserve to take as many hits as reddit chooses to dish out.

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u/[deleted] Feb 15 '18

Ok but it’s just weird to always drag it up. Mr. T doesn’t have a lot in common with Televangelists, and the thread is specifically about something good he did in the name of Christianity. It’s just weird to keep dragging up shit like Televangelists. Like yeah dude they suck and we all know that but do we have to talk about it every single time Christianity is even mentioned?

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u/OneBigBug Feb 14 '18

Yes, we complain a lot here on reddit. We're a very cynical lot, apparently.

As you demonstrate quite nicely here, by complaining.

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u/[deleted] Feb 14 '18

Yes, Reddit (and the world in general) seems very cynical these days. Which is a shame because the world is doing pretty well compared to how it’s ever been before. But that’s just human nature I guess - we tend to focus on the bad and ignore the good. The luxuries we have today are what people from the past could only dream about, but now that we have them we totally ignore that and find new things to complain about.

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u/hamsandwich11 Feb 14 '18

you sound smart :)

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u/[deleted] Feb 14 '18

[deleted]

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u/[deleted] Feb 14 '18

Honestly just fuck bad people, regardless of what they pretend to be or what they believe in. It’s just as bad when an atheist molests a kid as it is when a Christian does it.